16mm Cine Film to DVD Service

A Little History before contemplating engaging 16mm Film to DVD Transfer Service !
16mm film was widely used by keen amateurs right through to present times.

16 mm refers to the width of the film; other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures

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16 mm film was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923 as an inexpensive amateur alternative to the conventional 35 mm film format. Snobbishly, during the 1920s, the format was often referred to as sub-standard film by the professional industry.

As it was intended for amateur use, for safety reasons 16 mm film was one of the first formats to use acetate safety film as a film base. Kodak never manufactured nitrate film for the format due to the high flammability of the nitrate base. 35 mm did not abandon nitrate until 1952.

The silent 16 mm format was initially aimed at the home enthusiast. The addition of optical sound tracks and, most notably, Kodachrome in 1935, gave an enormous boost to 16 mm sales.

The format was used extensively in World War II and there was a huge expansion of 16 mm professional filmmaking companies in the post-war years.

Initially as a news-gathering format, the 16 mm format was also used to create programming shot outside the confines of the more rigid television production sets. Thanks to the compact size and lower cost, 16 mm was adopted for use in news reporting, corporate and educational films, and other uses. By contrast, the home movie market gradually switched to even less expensive 8 mm film and Super 8 mm format.

Single-perforation film only has perforations on one side of the film. The picture area of regular 16 mm has an aspect ratio close to 1.33, and 16 mm film prints use single-perf film so that there is space for a mono soundtrack where the other perf side would be on the negative.

In Britain much television footage was shot on 16 mm from the 1960s until the 1980s. Some dramas and documentaries were made entirely on 16 mm, notably Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, The Ascent of Man and Life on Earth.

An even older film - 9.5mm film was a film format that was introduced by Pathé Frères in 1922 as part of the Pathé amateur film system.

It became very popular in Europe over the next few decades. Over 300,000 projectors were produced and sold mainly in France and England, and many commercial features were available in the format.

The format uses a single, central perforation (sprocket hole) between each pair of frames.

The single hole allowed more of the film to be used for the actual image and in fact the image area is almost the same size as 16 mm film! The perforation in the film is invisible to viewers as the intermittent shutter blanks off the light as the film gets pulled through the gate to the next frame.

In most 9.5 mm projectors, the shutter also operated once whilst each frame was stationary in the gate for the purposes of increasing the apparent frame rate.

Not many people appreciate that the width of 9.5 millimeters was chosen because 3 strips of film could be made from one strip of 35 mm film. This was useful when duplicating films because only 1 strip of 35 mm had to be processed. Finally, the sides, which contained the 35 mm sprocket holes, were cut off, the remaining film was cut into 3 strips, and the central sprocket holes added to each new strip.

So you see, a lot of history went by before you could consider your 16mm Film to DVD Transfer Project!